Death Row Inmate Fights Lawyers' Bid

His Attorneys Are Seeking Competency Evaluation

Russell Peeler Jr., facing execution for ordering his younger brother to kill a woman and her 8-year-old son in Bridgeport in 1999, is taking on his own attorneys as he moves toward the start of a hearing on his final petition to win a new trial.

Last month, Peeler's attorneys — taking a page from the legal strategy of serial killer Michael Ross' defense team — filed a motion seeking a competency evaluation for Peeler. Attorneys William H. Paetzold and Jeffrey C. Kestenband said Peeler'spetition, or writ of habeas corpus, often a convict's last-resort bid for a new trial, is premature since the appeal of his death sentence is not complete and still in the briefing stage.

"Given the potentially fatal consequences of the petitioner's course of action, counsel seeks the same type of evaluation that Michael Ross underwent in 2005 when he decided to waive any further post-convictions challenges to his death sentence," the attorneys wrote in the motion.

Ross was put to death in 2005, the first execution in Connecticut since 1960.

Paetzold and Kestenband said the exam was needed to determine whether Peeler "is competent to make such a self-destructive choice" to move ahead with the hearing. The attorneys said his decision is "particularly puzzling … not to mention extremely hazardous because he is serving two separate life sentences apart from his death sentence," they wrote.

Peeler, in a handwritten motion penned on notebook paper, is fighting back, seeking dismissal of his attorneys.

"This is rank absurdity and it's absolutely baseless but what their efforts underscore is the glaring disconnect on the behalf of these attorneys in terms of representing the petitioner with due diligence," the motion, filed late last month, said. Peeler "was taken by surprise" by his attorneys' filing, the motion states.

Peeler, 42, was sentenced to death after a Superior Court jury convicted him of ordering his younger brother, Adrian Peeler, to kill Karen Clarke and her youngson, Leroy "B.J." Brown Jr., at a Bridgeport apartment. The boy was expected to be the key witness against Peeler in the fatal shooting of Clarke's boyfriend.

Adrian Peeler, 38, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and received a 20-year prison sentence for his role in the slayings.

Connecticut lawmakers abolished the death penalty in 2012 but left in place the death sentence imposed on Peeler and the other men currently on death row. A challenge based on that action is pending before the state Supreme Court.

A Superior Court judge in Rockville is expected to take up motions on Peeler's habeas petition Thursday morning. A hearing on the petition is scheduled to begin next week.

Peeler's petition alleges that he is being held unlawfully on death row at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. It focuses on a series of constitutional claims, including that prosecutors violated Peeler's fair trial and due process rights.

In his petition,Peeler argues that the state failed to disclose phone records that were favorable to his defense and that he was tried too close in time to two other trials that he said "generated a considerable amount of negative publicity" about him. The petitionalso says Peeler went to trial before his attorneys "had sufficient time" to prepare.

Peeler charges that the jury was not made aware of a plea agreement the state made with one of its key witnesses. The information, Peeler says, could have been used to impeach the witness's credibility.

He says the state did not disclose audiotapes that "tended to show the pressure investigators placed" on the key witness, pressure that made the witness "frustrated, afraid and scared of investigators such that she aimed to please them," the petition states.

The killings of Clarke and her son shocked the state, drew national notice, and exposed flaws in the state's witness protection program that prompted state legislators to pass new protections for witnesses, including enabling law enforcement authorities to intervene when parents refuse offers of protection for their children.

After Clarke's boyfriend was killed and her son was determined to be a witness to the slaying, police said they set up special patrols outside Clarke's house but discontinued the patrols at Clarke's request.